Pebble raises record $10 million on KickStarter, sells 85,000 watches

The Pebble smartwatch has had a tremendous journey over the past three weeks. Not even a week after its announcement, the watch became the most funded project in the history of crowd-sourcing website Kickstarter. Eric Migicovsky, the company’s founder, and his team have since doubled in size from five employees to 10 and have sold 85,000 watches to 66,434 backers, raising more than $10 million in the process. The Pebble was in such high demand that Migicovsky made the difficult decision to limit pre-orders to 85,000, a number that was reached nine days prior to the project’s original end date of May 18th.

The Pebble smartwatch is compatible with iOS 5 and Android 2.3 or higher. The device features a 1.26-inch 144 x 168-pixel black and white ePaper display with a backlight, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and newly added support for Bluetooth 4.0, which will be enabled shortly after launch through a free software update. The Pebble is also equipped with a three-axis accelerometer, a vibrating motor and four control buttons that lie on the sides of the device.

The watch is able to receive call, email and message notifications and can control music from Spotify, iTunes and Pandora on iOS or Android devices over Bluetooth. Perhaps the Pebble’s most exciting feature is its software development kit (SDK), which will enable third-party developers to create applications that can expand the watches’ capabilities. Earlier this month, the company announced it had partnered with popular fitness app RunKeeper to allow users to wirelessly control and display information from the app on the Pebble.

We, like many others, have taken an interest in Pebble and ordered a watch, and will review the device later this fall. The Pebble smartwatch will be available for pre-order after May 18th for $150 and will ship after the Kickstarter orders, which are slated for a September arrival.